Pop Culture Blog

Play These: ‘Far Cry 3,’ ‘DmC Devil May Cry’ and ‘Tokyo Crash Mobs’

It’s a new year for games, and things have started off pretty strong. Granted, one of these games was a late 2012 release, but the quality bar for early 2013 is still promising.

It may be a weird year overall, though. New consoles from Sony and Microsoft are expected to launch near the end of the near (November would be my guess for both systems, personally), and at the time being we know nothing about what games might be coming with them. That leaves Fall and Winter as very unknown quantities, but there’s still a lot of stuff to get excited about over the next few months.

For now, though, let’s focus on what you can grab right this second.

Far Cry 3 (PC, 360, PS3): I sadly didn’t get a chance to play this one before compiling my “Best Games of 2012” list last month. If I had, the list probably would have been different, because Far Cry 3 is probably one of the best games of last year.

The game has been called (perhaps lazily) “Skyrim with guns,” alluding to the fact that it’s a first-person, open-world game with some light RPG elements, quests to complete and random encounters in the world (plus, both games let you hunt bears). They’re very different experiences, though, and you shouldn’t assume that if you like one you’ll like the other. Far Cry 3 is much more high octane, focusing on shooting, destruction and general insanity. Skyrim let you spend hours upon hours simply exploring, reading and talking. Far Cry lets you set a field of mariujanna.

So, you know. To each his own.

It’s an awesome game, though, whether you want to waste hours hunting animals and crafting bigger wallets and weapon bags or actually, you know, seeing the story to its (reportedly disappointing) conclusion.

DmC Devil May Cry (360, PS3, PC): With a new look, a new developer and a slightly new direction, many people (specifically the DMC series’ die hard fans) were skeptical that this reboot could be a game worth playing (some, in fact, still refuse to believe otherwise despite the game releasing to mostly favorable reviews). While you could compare DMC to other character action games like God of War, its distinct style and level of difficulty made it somewhat unique in the PS2 era.

I don’t know where exactly I stand among the Devil May Cry fanbase. I really enjoyed the first and third games (I never played the second, which was panned by fans) as well as the divisive DMC4, but I’ve also never been one to complete the games on their highest difficulties.

But for what it’s worth, I think DmC is freakin’ awesome, and it will be a huge shame if it gets overlooked.

The over-the-top, completely ridiculous style is still here in force, though it’s tempered by a few more serious moments here and there. Still, the environment gets manipulated in some crazy ways that lead the way to fun platforming and and visually appealing battlegrounds. The combat feels great, with a fluid control system that allows you to swap through multiple weapons on the fly, using each of them in the same combo if you so choose.

The “Normal” difficulty won’t challenge DMC fans, but higher difficulties should do the trick fine. On the hardest difficulty level, you die in one hit while enemies have plenty of health. I can’t imagine anyone will consider that a cakewalk.

Tokyo Crash Mobs (3DS): I don’t necessarily love Tokyo Crash Mobs for it’s gameplay, though it’s fun. I love it because it’s off-the-wall, bananas, “I can’t believe Nintendo of all people published this, and outside of Japan to boot” crazy.

Uh, what?

Basically, it’s a color matching puzzle game, somewhat akin to Zuma or to a lesser extent Bust-a-Move (or Puzzle Bobble. Whichever you know it by), in that there are “pieces” of many colors coming down from the top of the screen, and you have to shoot similarly colored pieces up at them in order to create matches of three-of-a-kind or more, which will remove said pieces from play.

Thing is, the “pieces” in Tokyo Crash Mobs are people, and you are literally tossing people into other people into order to get rid of a line (a line to where? Who knows?). Why does tossing people in similarly colored clothing get rid of them? Even the game tells you outright that they don’t know. It just happens.

Whaaaaaaaat?

But it gets crazier and crazier the further into the game you get. From completely random, sometimes baffling live-action videos before each stage (one consists entirely of a woman staring at a spiral shape on a piece of paper, moving her head along with the spiral, until she gets dizzy and falls over. That’s it!) to the insane photos that sometimes pop up when you do well, Tokyo Crash Mobs will often make you shake your head and ask, “What just happened?”

And that’s a kind of crazy that I can totally get behind.

WHAAAAAAAisthiswhatbeingondrugsislike?AAAAAT?

It’s only $6 to download on the 3DS eShop, which isn’t a bad price for a legitimately fun and kind of insane puzzle game.

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